Student Debt . . . Society’s Shame!

According to the Office of National Statistics there are now 3.3 million young adults living with their parents. That’s 618,000 young adults (aged between 20 – 34) more in 2015 than in under a decade ago in 1996. Or to be more precise . . . That’s around 1 in 4 young adults were living with their parents in 2015!

As we delve further it gets more unpleasant, as we see that the percentage of young householders has decreased from 55% to 30% for 24 – 29 year olds and from 68% to 46% for 30 – 34 year olds, in that same time frame.

Neoliberalism sets out to create a rentier Society, where feudalism can flourish because land ownership is retained in the hands of the few. To ram home the point 91% of 20 – 24-year-old householders . . . YES 91% . . . live in rented accommodation, meaning just 9% own or are buying a home of their own.

The UK government tells us it wants to increase the number of affordable properties available for the young, supported by the other political parties who have raised this issue. This is lunacy of the worst and most despicable kind where our young are being financially crippled with student debt by that same government.

What possible logic is there in robbing the young before they have a job and then declaring that a ‘caring’ government’s solution to this problem is a ‘soundbite’ that might create a meagre supply of homes that would be affordable to some of the people they are enslaving in debt?

The lunacy becomes mind-numbing when we now hear that 73% of students will have some debt written off. If this is true, then what possible point was there in nearly doubling the average size of personal student debt in the first place?

In the US it gets even more horrific, as over $1 Trillion of student debt is viewed as a trophy of neoliberalism. Indeed, the government has actually changed the laws on bankruptcy so that they prohibit students from taking this course of action when debt becomes too much. However, the law continues to allow corporations this avenue of escape when their debts become too onerous.

Following this progression, it begs the question as to whether this unpleasant form of neoliberalism will cross the Atlantic, like so many other financial practices, to further persecute our young?

What we must not lose sight of here is that with the threat of even more odious trade agreements now being signed into law, (with supposedly no way of taking them off the statue books once they arrive), will bankers have the legal clout to enslave our young – and everyone else – in debt repayments, with no legal means of reprieve?

We create our world from what we believe in and our dominating beliefs dominate how Society conducts itself. Currently the purveyors of neoliberalism have the floor and their greed will be their eventual downfall because they are totally unaware of the type of Society they are breeding.

If we get down to basics, natural laws are by far the most powerful at work on this Planet and they are now being contravened big time! Not matter what type of living creature you are, be they animal or human, there is an overwhelming drive to ‘leave the nest’ and strike out on your own to carve out your own life. We see this at its most pronounced with fledgling birds and even lion cubs, where the parents will forcefully drive their young away to begin their own lives.

Human beings, being the most ‘intelligent’ of the Planetary species however, are arrogantly ignoring this most basic of drives and actually impeding this natural progression of its young. This greed driven action will have disastrous repercussions as our young become more and more disenchanted. Not because they are ambitious or violent but because they are trying to answer the call deep within each of them to ‘set up their own nest’ and breed a family.

Neoliberalism lacks any moral conscience and because it lacks the intelligence to work out that true power comes from nurturing those you wish to have power over, it is breeding a terrorist Society of the future. The young, we know, are easily drawn to terror organisations and other rebellious groups such as the evermore successful hacking groups.

It is not that they are inherently violent or want to kill. They simply see it as the only course of action, to try and right the wrongs being heaped upon them. Every explosion or release of secret documents into the public arena is a victory against this abusive establishment that is intent upon growing feudalism.

They are too intelligent to be returned to this medieval form of control (they have an expensive education to prove that!) and resistance will become stronger as long as neoliberalism is allowed to continue to dominate our culture.

The young are our future. What we sow in their young minds dictates tomorrows culture. We cried out that all young, no matter what their social standing, should have access to first class education and all we did was create a huge class of the indebted, with no chance of the promised jobs with which to repay that debt.

Society must hang its head in shame that we are not nurturing our future Society to look after this beautiful Planet. Instead, we are fomenting conflict and destruction that could escalate to unthinkable levels of destruction with arrogant, uncaring and bloody-minded governments.

Another ‘Wake Up’ call that is not getting sufficient exposure to my mind.

Until the next time

Thinking from his Book: Global Magna Carta. Returning Power to the 99% . . . If They Want It! By J T Coombes